


Zombiestuck

by buttercrumb



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Apocalypsestuck, F/F, F/M, Humanstuck, Sadstuck, Zombiestuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-09
Updated: 2013-02-09
Packaged: 2017-11-28 17:53:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/677193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttercrumb/pseuds/buttercrumb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A decayed castle near a cliff. The perfect place for our prison. It had been five months since we’d been home stuck, haunted by the moans outside, an eerie reminder every day that we weren’t safe and that we never would be. The food was stocked in the basement, but that was where the voices were the loudest. Incomprehensible grunts and groans against the thick walls of stone, nothing more but dirt against the immortal beasts. They would break though it eventually, and there was no denying that, it was only a matter of when.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Zombiestuck

**Author's Note:**

> wow okay sorry for the crappy names and all the sadstuck. also this was originally a secret santa gift to a friend on tumblr. enjoy! ^u^
> 
> Characters names:  
>  Aradia: Arabelle (Narrator)  
>  Tavros: Trevor  
>  Sollux: Soloman (Sol)  
>  Karkat: Karson  
>  Vriska: Vivianne  
>  Equius: Ector  
>  Kanaya: Keyanna  
>  Eridan: Erickson  
>  Feferi: Fey  
>  Gamzee: Gavin  
>  Terezi: Teryn  
>  Nepeta: Neilla

A decayed castle near a cliff. The perfect place for our prison. It had been five months since we’d been home stuck, haunted by the moans outside, an eerie reminder every day that we weren’t safe and that we never would be.

In the beginning there had been twelve survivors, all huddled together in the rich girl’s house, Vivianne. She seemed like the kind of person that was always in control, that always had her act together. But once the horde hit Alternia, the big city, no one was quite the same.  
We had all been playing a game together when the undead rose, all strangers at the time forced to cooperate and survive. We all fled to the castle on the hills where we thought we’d be safe, but it was a temporary thing really. After all what is a few months to those that do not breath air? What is a year to a dead thing that cannot speak or think for itself? That only knows an endless hollow hunger it can never quench?

The food was stocked in the basement, but that was where the voices were the loudest. Incomprehensible grunts and groans against the thick walls of stone, nothing more but dirt against the immortal beasts. They would break though it eventually, and there was no denying that, it was only a matter of when.

\---

Vivianne was the first one to lose it.

She had her entire house draped in gold and riches she had stolen. No one asked her much about her past but during the first month, when she began to crack, she told us. She’d hurt people, people she’d called her friends, people close to her. She’d hurt them just for the sake of seeing their wounds, their pitiful faces asking her why. Sooner or later it became a habit, and sooner or later she’d killed a man.

That was what broke her in the end.

Vivianne was the one who listened to the voices the most. When she wasn’t busy bossing someone around or complaining she’d sit in a window and listen to them as if they were a lullaby. It looked as if she were waiting for someone, watching for the day they’d come to collect her. More than anything she looked willing to give herself to them when they came, to let them devour her whole and spit out her bones. I knew that ever since she had first seen the life seep out from that man’s eyes, she had carried a heavy scar, still tender and raw and hurting inside.  
But still, I did not know to the extent that it was buried.

On the twentieth day of the first month Vivianne jumped from the top story window of her castle. She landed with a smack, crunching her bones and snapping her neck. Greedily the monsters ate her life, tucked every bit of it away into the pits of their stomachs, reducing a girl with dreams to nothing but a meal.

I can only hope she found who she was looking for.

\---

We were all worn out after that, but it brought us together and made us realize that some of us could and would follow the same fate if we didn’t all work together. We bonded after that, we learned to care about each other. The house was full of life, an easy trick to make us forget what lay outside every minute of every day. We learned each other’s names, we became civilized.

Neilla and Ector, after that, became inseparable. Neilla was a feisty little girl full of energy and youth, a small package of lean muscle. She was always smiling and joking around.  
Ector was an older gentlemen, soft spoken but with a good heart. He was full of brain and brawn, but just a lot of brawn.

They were the power and drive of the group, and were responsible for the food supply. They talked endlessly on their hunts, venturing into the outside loaded with weapons we didn’t know Vivianne knew how to work. It was as if they had been waiting to meet each other their whole lives.

They were happy, happier than any of us probably. But their tale was a short one, tainted and stained with blood and a twisted mistake.

I guess we should’ve all known how easily beautiful things are destroyed.

\---

It was Gavin who did it, late in the night. Everything was hush hush except for the ever present wails of the lifeless scraping their teeth against the walls, begging for a bite of something alive.  
No one knew how it happened, but he was bitten. A chunk of his meat was laying in the throat of one of them, and we were completely unaware.

He had always been pale and always been out of sorts from his history of heavy drug use. But the moonlight sung to him that night and awoke another side of him, the side that would never die and would never again live.

He crept up from his bed and smelt for the closest flesh, crouched low and followed the trail. Ector and Neilla had been stocking the canned food they’d pillaged in the cellar, laughing about an inside joke. Gavin lurched at the young girl who didn’t have time to think, his teeth bared and bloodied. Ector wouldn’t have gone down so easily without a battle to the death, he was all fight and no mercy, except that he surrendered.

Throwing Neilla aside with one sweep of his arm he let out a primal howl as Gavin pierced his flesh and felt his strength rush into his mouth.  
With tears spilling down her cheeks, Neilla knew what she had to do. It would’ve been easy for her not to, of course. She could’ve simply left everyone else in the house die if she had hated us enough. But somehow Neilla was something more. She sincerely cared for others, not just for herself. She believed in a better world, cleansed off the plague that surrounded us. She believed in something impossible, she believed in it with every fiber in her body.

In the time it took for Ector to accumulate a growing puddle of crimson under his lifeless corpse and for Gavin to have his fill of human life, Neilla simply closed the basement door, bolted it and sat down in a chair.

We heard her scream only once.

And then just like that they were both gone.

\---

The only two who had strong enough stomachs to kill them in the morning were Erickson and Keyanna. Erickson only wanted to do it to impress Fey, swinging his gun and putting on a show. He was always more than willing to annihilate the infected, tallying up points for every arm, leg and skull shattered. He didn’t see them as people anymore. To him they were nothing more but scum covering the earth, meant to be hunted and extincted.

Keyanna, on the other hand, respected them. She did clean sweeps, severing their spinal cords with her chainsaw. Keyanna knew they had once been human, just like us. The stagnant blood that sat in their veins had been full of purpose and vitality. Their minds hours ago were filled with thoughts and opinions and a voice, not just a numb instinct to hurt and destroy anything in it’s reach. She had probably seen a mother eat her daughter or a desperate survivor use his best friend for sustenance. Those kind of things changed who you were.

There was evil out there, ugliness the likes Erickson could never comprehend simply because he refused to see it.

\---

Teryn was the only one to figure out what had happened to Ector and Neilla. She was quick about it, telling us hard cold facts from the blood that was sprayed against the walls, rubbed into the handles of the doors and that formed in wet sticky puddles under our feet.  
You could tell she was curious about the whole thing. She didn’t like to think of them as her friends or even people she knew. To her they were only victim and murderer, simple as that. Teryn could easily distance herself from any situation. Her emotions never seemed to get in the way because she could repress them and pretend they weren’t there.

There was no grey with her. Only white and black.

But her black and white perspective was just as a twisted way to think as the infected, who knew only one way to think and only one way to kill.

\---

Trevor broke both his legs in the second month.  
He told us that he’d been tripped by Vivianne when she’d still had life in her veins and thought he’d be fine. It weakened his legs though and made his bones brittle. They cracked and fractured easily when he jumped from the ladder.

Trevor was usually most happiest when he was forgetting his pain, both physical and emotional. He’d been friends with Gavin, Neilla and Vivianne, though god knows why. Each of their deaths tore a hole in his heart until it didn’t feel like a heart anymore. It felt empty instead like a handful of broken glass in his chest instead.  
He was always busying himself with mundane tasks that didn’t need to be done. Like cleaning shelves that were already dusted or organizing cans by their labels then changing them later to alphabetical.

He made it seem like he was always content and satisfied. He was timid and usually too frightened to speak up against anyone, but that was what made him so friendly and sweet. He was a little bit of purity left in a world of chaos and disorder. But he faded quickly, losing his doe eyed charm to twitching blood shot eyes, his imagination to disturbing thoughts of his body being torn apart by a pair of teeth.

Trevor was always humming, blocking out the screams of the undead. Trevor never looked in mirrors, too afraid to see a dead pair of eyes staring back at him. Trevor refused to look out windows in fear of seeing something else that would fuel his reoccurring nightmares.

They became worse as he became hot and feverish from the infection that was slowly taking over his body from his legs up. He’d yell and curse and cry that it was unfair. Why was he safe from them but still dying? Why was he safe but unhappy? Why was he being swallowed alive by something that wasn’t dead?

Trevor died soon after from his infection.

I’m sorry to say he went a broken bitter man.

\---

Fey was the last one with any shred of hope left.  
She grinned and giggled and got everyone playing cards and pretending everything was alright again. Her intentions were good, but out of place. Erickson was the only one buying it, thinking he could reconquer the world with firepower. It was so painfully obvious to everyone else. Violence was what took over the world in the first place and brought the horde to life. Violence would not cure the infection, it would spread it.

And still, stubborn as always, he begun a rebellion to free the outside lands of the curse and regain what was once filled with so much worth. He grabbed all the guns he could find and tried to convince each of us individually. His words had no sense to them and his plan had no action or possible hopeful end result. We all knew he would die if he went through with it.

Dejected and rejected by each of us, he slunk off to Fey, begging her to join him. She gave him a sad smile and slowly shook her head. Over the past few weeks they had actually developed a genuine friendship, though it was obvious that Erickson was looking for something more in their relationship, the foolish boy he was. Love had no place in an apocalypse. There was only room for hate.

And so his hate grew until it filled every part of him.

Carefully, his tone stern, he again asked her to join him. She told him her answer once more and so he shot her through the heart.

The bullet was loud and stark against the silence of the others, standing there quietly and awkwardly. Erickson had finally cracked.

Soloman was the only one who made any sound.

He broke out laughing.

A mocking sort of snicker, it was only one noise, wordless and meaningless, and yet it meant everything in the world. It meant that Erickson was weak, Erickson was hurt, Erickson was betrayed by his only friend. It was cruel laughter and it echoed throughout the room.

Bang.

Another man down, another one bereft of life and breath and misery. His lips were curled into a smile as if he had been expecting it. His blood ran warm, his arm twisted at an unnatural angle as he fell onto the floor like a dead weight.

We never saw Erickson again after that. He brushed something away from his eye, perhaps a tear, then turned and left.

Armed with only a shotgun in his hand, we heard five gunshots before it fell dead silent outside.

Sol had been the brains behind many of our operations, and my closest friend in the house. He had been the only one I had really talked to, and we got along fine. We had started talking on the very first night when we both couldn’t sleep over the noises of their voices outside the windows, wailing and sobbing. We both swore we heard them calling out names of people who didn’t matter anymore, though we knew it was impossible. It almost felt as if the dead were talking to us themselves.

From then on I had watched him from afar while he befriended the others, always the witty one, always the sarcastic one. But only I knew the side of him that couldn’t sleep that first night.

I thought it meant something to me but when I saw him laying dead on the floor, I realized I didn’t feel anything at all.

\---

Keyanna was the one that kept me company after that. At least she did before she joined the legion and converted.

She’d been ordinary and simple, just like me. I had no idea what went on in her head though.

We shared a few secrets on what we’d seen over the last few months, we told each other stories of better times when we didn’t have to clean up cadavers, narrowly dodge the contaminated and kill our friends.  
I thought she was normal. For a while I almost thought we could make it out together, her and I if it came down to it. We both had futures because we had been the least touched by the disaster.

Or so I thought.

Keyanna had read one too many books. She’d finish long tomes of zombie fiction and vampire love stories in a matter of days. She glorified their tragic lives and ability to live forever. To her it was a gift.

I lost all hope of becoming her friend when she asked me if I believed that the flesh-eaters were lucky to be dead. They had nothing to lose, nothing to guard or keep safe anymore. They were free to live their new life chained by nothing to hold them back. They had received the life planned out by the Universe as a gift to mankind so it wouldn’t have to suffer anymore. There was neither heaven nor hell, dead or alive, only asleep. When they awoke, they were holy and pure and invincible. They were gods.

When she looked at me with eyes gleaming with excitement I could tell already she was gone.

That idea she’d created, the theory that there was something more after you gained a craving only destruction could satisfy, would gnaw at her and chew away at her sanity.

I was right.

The next day she woke up before dawn, kissed my forehead and marched out the front door dressed in her finest evening gown.

\---

Teryn and Karson were the only ones left other than me and soon I realized I didn’t exist to them. Karson has always been sulking in the corner, either yelling or complaining at us at any given time. He wasn’t stable, he was about to break and I could feel it. Teryn was also at her wits end. She’d lost the ability to feel sympathy and experience human emotions. We’d been lucky that she hadn’t gone ballistic up until that point.

It’d been four months and the two of them hadn’t hardly talked at all. They were making up for it fast, though.  
I walked around the castle, searching for food because of the empty basement. They’d taken the last of it and hauled it up to the bathroom, blocking off the only way in except through the outside window.

I’d run my hand along the wall and sometimes sit outside the door listening to the conversations they’d locked me out of, listen to them gorge on the canned goods they cheated me for. Teryn was playing him for a fool, cackling and flirting and pulling the wool over his eyes. He bought it too, the poor boy, I heard their heated exchanges and garbled speech between kisses.

I didn’t know what to do, but apparently Teryn did.

When I awoke in the morning outside the door with the last pistol in the house gripped tightly in my hand, she opened the door for the first time and strode out. Immediately I jumped up and looked at what lay behind her.

In the bathtub lay Karson, slumped over with pills spilling from his mouth, his eyes rolled back into his head.

Teryn gave a smug grin and a little hint of laughter. She exposed the hidden pills underneath her tongue and spat them out as if in disgust. Then she looked at me with the fakest smile I ever saw and eyes that wanted to kill. She really was a monster, there was no trace of humanity left.

I pulled the trigger and don’t regret it.

\---

 

The supplies left behind in the bathroom were too low to make another meal and my time had run out.  
I knew this time would come. I knew it so much it hurt.

So I am seated in a chair in front of the entrance, shallow cuts run up and down my arms. I didn’t even feeling it as I dug the broken shard of glass into the tender flesh.

It doesn’t matter anymore, though. When I am ready I will open the door and watch as the horde consumes me and everything I once was.

I wasn’t like the others to begin with.

I wasn’t like Trevor or Erickson trying not to see the ugliness that had always been there or Neilla or Fey who both believed this world could really change.

I knew we were doomed from the start.

Fighting something so inevitable is hard, fruitless and frustrating. My life is only one meaningless drop in the ocean. No one will rejoice when I become one of them and no one will mourn because I am the last.

One last tear streaks down my face as I reach over and unlatch the door.

One tear I just can’t explain.

The only mark I bothered to leave for the world was the note on the wall written with my own blood.

If we were fated to fail from the beginning, why did we even try?


End file.
